Biohacking with Dave Asprey

Written By Kayla Barnes

Today I am sitting down with my friend, Dave Asprey. Dave is the father of Biohacking and has been a friend and mentor for years. We discuss all things longevity and biohacking!

About Dave:

Dave Asprey is best known as the founder of Bulletproof Coffee and the entire Biohacking movement. As a four-time New York Times bestselling author, CEO of Upgrade Labs, and host of a Webby award-winning, top 100 podcast, The Human Upgrade (formerly Bulletproof Radio), Dave is a maverick in the entrepreneurial health science and biotechnology space. As a true pioneer, Dave was the first person to ever sell a product online, and of course, it was related to coffee. He sold caffeine t-shirts out of his dorm room before the web browser was even invented which earned him a profile in Entrepreneur Magazine. Dave became an early internet technology journalist, cyber security expert, and co-founded a division of Exodus Communications, a company that seeded the internet we know today. At only 28 years old, Dave’s phenomenal career success left him battling cognitive fog, arthritis, pre-diabetes, put him at high risk for stroke, and with the biochemistry of a 60-year-old. His own premature aging launched him on a quest to reclaim his health and vitality, lose over 100 pounds, and not only reverse his biological age but increase his IQ by over 12 points! This work led him to create The Bulletproof Diet and to coin the health science term “biohacking,” a word once deemed “fringe” yet now resides in the Merriam Webster dictionary, along with Dave Aprey as part of the definition. Dave's relentless pursuit of human potential drove him to invest nearly $2 million in upgrading his biology and run the world's first and largest biohacking conference, earning him the title "Father of Biohacking." You’ve seen him featured in Men's Health, the Today Show, Wired, Good Morning America, the New York Times, Fast Company, and many other major publications. Forbes named his company one of the top 20 most innovative brands in the world, and he’s credited with creating three unique billion-dollar markets: MCT Oil, Collagen Protein, and Functional Coffee. Dave’s mission is to help people upgrade to a happier, more conscious state, one cell at a time. As the founder of 40 Years of Zen, Dave applies neuroscience to personal transformation. 40 Years of Zen is the world's most exclusive five-day intensive for upgrading the brain. Attracting Hollywood celebrities, C-suite executives, professional athletes, and other global elite, Dave’s programs are leading human evolution. Dave divides his time between Vancouver Island, BC, and Austin, Texas, enjoying time with his two children while sharing dad jokes that never fail to induce groans and eye-rolls!

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00.480] - KAYLA BARNES

Welcome to the longevity optimization podcast, where we discuss longevity, optimal health, nutrition, peak performance, cognitive excellence, and so much more. Dave, it is such a pleasure to have you back with me today.

 

[00:00:14.370] - DAVE ASPREY

Kayla, happy to be here.

 

[00:00:16.020] - KAYLA BARNES

I know it's been a while.

 

[00:00:17.210] - DAVE ASPREY

I love the new studio. It's great.

 

[00:00:18.850] - KAYLA BARNES

Thank you. Oh, I didn't even point that out.

 

[00:00:20.800] - DAVE ASPREY

You see the Hollywood hills?

 

[00:00:22.050] - KAYLA BARNES

It's pretty nice, right?

 

[00:00:23.060] - DAVE ASPREY

Yeah. So you don't have the Hollywood Hills sign in the background. You have a wall behind us.

 

[00:00:27.400] - KAYLA BARNES

I know, I know. No, I know. Well, I mean.

 

[00:00:29.880] - DAVE ASPREY

Cause we're, like, in a pretty awesome part of town.

 

[00:00:32.910] - KAYLA BARNES

Well, you know my esthetic, right? It's like that, basically, like, cubicle beige, like the gray square with the, like, textured background. I literally try to make it the same.

 

[00:00:42.460] - DAVE ASPREY

I'm with you. I actually prefer geometric shapes as well.

 

[00:00:45.900] - KAYLA BARNES

I'm good. I love that. Well, let's talk about everything new in biohacking. What's exciting you in biohacking these days?

 

[00:00:54.010] - DAVE ASPREY

Well, the dream for me has always been I want to teach people how to control their own biology, and it's such a gift to know how to do it. So at this point, I only have 1200 episodes of my podcast and eight books and 3000 blog posts and 10,000 social media posts. So if you just set aside the amount of time it would take you to get a two year degree and you just go through all that, I'm pretty sure you'll know a lot about biohacking.

 

[00:01:21.930] - KAYLA BARNES

Yes.

 

[00:01:23.290] - DAVE ASPREY

That might not be where some people want to put two years of their life. In fact, I wouldn't want to put two years of my life there if I didn't have to. So when people come to my biohacking conference, which is the first conference that really launched the movement, and it's the largest conference in its 13th year now, although we're calling it 10th because three years disappeared. Thank you, government. And so that's coming up in Dallas here at the end of the month, at the end of May. And so that's really got a lot of my attention. But one of the things that I'm planning to announce there is a new way of looking at all this content, where if you tell us enough about who you are and where you want to go, we'll tell you exactly what you need to measure it, exactly what biohacks to do, what supplements, what food, even what pharmaceuticals, and it's done with AI. So I'm launching a really important tool that's going to let people have all of the data they need, whether it's from a wearable, even from medical lab tests and run it through the lens of, I want to show up as a stronger, healthier, more powerful human being, not the medical lens.

 

[00:02:34.820] - DAVE ASPREY

Here's a piece of paper from a lab. No one can interpret it. Your doctor fought with you over whether you could have a vitamin D test, and then they didn't know how to interpret it anyway. And then when they did interpret it, they interpreted it without knowing what values for longevity even are. So that whole sense of lack that's present, you should have an expansive sense of freedom. Like, oh, I can measure anything I want in my body, and if I want to get it, I can. And since I don't know what to measure, I want good advice. If I want to live a long time, what test should I do? If I want to lose weight, what tests should I do? Or I only have $100, I don't want to pay for a test, what should I do anyway? And all of those, there's an answer. And so we've been working on this AI recommendation platform. It's got almost $3 million invested in it, and I'm going to be talking about that at the conference. So this is my most exciting thing. You don't have to read everything. You just have to know what to do.

 

[00:03:30.270] - DAVE ASPREY

And for people who are really interested in getting in ahead of the announcement, you can go to. I will teach you to be young.com, which is just a temporary URL, but it's kind of funny. I like it.

 

[00:03:40.970] - KAYLA BARNES

It's a great URL. Yeah, I love that. Well, I'm excited for that because that is, I've been really looking forward to seeing what AI was going to do in the industry. You know, I have a functional medicine clinic, and I see all the time, like, people love it because, I mean, I really opened the place so I could run all these labs on myself. Like, I have everything, and whenever I want it, I can have it. And it's so sad that that's not the case. Like, you have to beg your doctors. Everyone's always like, send me the label that you would call in at your clinic. And I'm like, here you go. And they're like, my doctor wouldn't give me any of these. I'm like, yeah, I know.

 

[00:04:13.900] - DAVE ASPREY

Since when did doctors become the people who gave you a permission slip to look at your own biology?

 

[00:04:19.070] - KAYLA BARNES

It's, it's crazy.

 

[00:04:20.280] - DAVE ASPREY

Yeah, it's super crazy. And I love doctors. I was married to one for a long time, and most of my really close friends are in the medical profession and all of them are saying we're overworked and there's more than 100 million people in the US who don't even have a primary care doctor. So we have a situation where we're wasting doctors time. And I'm like, oh, well, what if people used this new AI platform and they just didn't have to go to the doctor? And when they went, they already likely knew what was wrong, but they knew they needed to go. So now the doctors get the people they can actually help, instead of people who are asking for stuff that they don't even know about or don't care about. So this is like a massive filtering function. Think of it like in your home. If you have a clogged sink, you could call the building inspector to get a permission slip to call the plumber to make an appointment at the plumber's convenience to come in to plunge your sink for you. That's how current medical world works. Or you could just go to Home Depot, buy a plunger and plunge your sink.

 

[00:05:26.700] - DAVE ASPREY

Yeah, right. I want our health to be that second model where you're empowered, you can do it yourself, and if you need help, you go to the doctor. But before you go to the doctor, you would do the same thing that everyone else does. I have a clogged sync. You go to YouTube and like, how do I fix that? And then you just. You do it. And why is it any different for indigestion than for a clogged sync? We just need to know what to do. So my job has always been, let me tell you what to do. To be powerful, to be younger, to get your brain back, to get your libido back, or maybe just to make them all better, if you still have them and you're one of the few. So that's the goal. I'm super stoked. And this is about giving people their own information and advice.

 

[00:06:06.480] - KAYLA BARNES

Well, I love that. Dave, when did you officially get into this? Because, I mean, when I first started looking into this, like, you were one of the first guys I, you know, came across. I read a bunch of your books. But what year did you officially get into biohacking? You like the term?

 

[00:06:22.330] - DAVE ASPREY

I mean, I started the term. So I'm going to say that I launched biohacking as a word with a definition and as an industry at the end of 2011. And then in 2018, Webster's added it to the dictionary as a new word in the language. And my name is there in the online dictionary, which is like the least likely thing ever to happen to me, except for being in a magazine with my shirt off. Both of which happened.

 

[00:06:47.890] - KAYLA BARNES

I love that. Which magazine was that? Was it with the cryotherapy shot?

 

[00:06:51.920] - DAVE ASPREY

That was men's fitness, but just Austin. I just, like, there's, like, the Austin lifestyle magazine just did one, and, like, there weren't airbrushed. I'm in better shape than I was for the men's fitness one or men's health. And holy crap, like, I saw those pictures. Like, I'm kind of looking ripped. I'm 6% body fat, and I was probably closer to ten.

 

[00:07:15.370] - KAYLA BARNES

Nice. Well, hey, I mean, you're older now, in better shape.

 

[00:07:19.570] - DAVE ASPREY

I'm younger now. It's weird.

 

[00:07:20.580] - KAYLA BARNES

Well, I mean, chronologically, I feel judged. Well, you know what I meant.

 

[00:07:24.780] - DAVE ASPREY

I'm still. I'm triggered.

 

[00:07:28.570] - KAYLA BARNES

That's a whole nother thing. We'll table that for a bit.

 

[00:07:30.830] - DAVE ASPREY

Well, being. Being triggered makes you old, and so does being skeptical. No, there's science for this. People who are skeptical and easily triggered die something like five years sooner. So sometimes I point that out to the trolls. Is that rude?

 

[00:07:44.760] - KAYLA BARNES

No, I think it's really important. You know, sometimes people, like, comment things in my post, too, and, you know, I'll just say it. You know, people often, if you say anything about, like, body mass or, like, weight, people are very upset. But it's like, we can glamorize it as much as we want. But being an unhealthy body weight is unhealthy. Like, that's just being overweight is unhealthy.

 

[00:08:06.820] - DAVE ASPREY

I can't believe you'd say that.

 

[00:08:08.080] - KAYLA BARNES

I know, but it's just true.

 

[00:08:10.800] - DAVE ASPREY

I just go around that I'm like, look, I was fat, and then if someone gets triggered, no, I was 300 pounds. Are you telling me that I can't label myself as fat? Because, see, I was like, you were once, right? And I was also vegan, probably like you are now, too. It doesn't work, and you can fix it. So instead of saying you're driving a broken car around is normal with a lot of smoke coming out the back of it, you could just say that that's better than not driving around. But wouldn't it be nice if your car didn't do that? Right, and it's just a sense of peace. And so I finally just learned, like, people will jump in no matter what you say. There's always some keyboard warrior out there. And I realized those are not people I'm going to help. They're not interested in being helped. They're interested in being right, or more likely, they're interested in getting an emotional reaction. So I finally figured it out. These are people who were bullied, and they're still acting like bullies. So I'm like, I know what to do with bullies. I go back to 7th grade.

 

[00:09:08.340] - DAVE ASPREY

So my number one response to people who say whatever mean things about me is I just respond, that's not what your mom said. And when I say that, it's like, okay, now we're in the arena where they're actually playing. And of course, then they get all. They try to play victim, and I just laugh. And I'm like, that's not what your mom said either. And, like, what? What can they say? So here's the deal. If you're watching this, you get people who criticize you for that. People will be like, you say you're in longevity, Debbie. You look old. And I'm like, actually, I'm 51 years old on the calendar. And my lab tests are far lower than that, depending which lab test you want to listen to. But I've also lost 100 pounds, right? So having extra skin is something that happens during those 100 pounds, even if you're 25. But I don't have to make excuses for people. And if someone's gonna come in and just be a judgy jerk, just like, if someone came into your house and was insulting to you, you'd be like, get out of my house. Like, you're not welcome back here.

 

[00:10:01.260] - DAVE ASPREY

So I kick people off my Instagram or out of my community anytime they're mean spirited and critical, anytime they wanna say, that doesn't make any sense. I think you're wrong. And here's why. I'm like, thank you. Like, let's talk. Let's be curious. I'm sure I'm wrong about something. Teach me, right? And those are my favorite people. But very few critics who are gonna come out there with this whole victim mindset, they're not. They're not here for you. I would just block them. And then if anyone likes their post, block them, too. And you'll find it's 1% of the population is 90% of the screaming, and you have the ability to gag them.

 

[00:10:36.530] - KAYLA BARNES

Well, I mean, realistically. And this is probably not gonna be well received either, but if you're busy, you're not taking time to write Instagram comments that are negative. Like, I've written a total of zero negative Instagram comments in my whole life.

 

[00:10:50.420] - DAVE ASPREY

I've written lots of them. Cause it's kind of fun to play with trolls. Like, I was in BVI with my girlfriend, and the camera happened to tip sideways during a sunset, and she was looking at the sunset, and you might have seen her backside in a bikini. She was complicit in that. We actually planned the shot. It was funny, and it was just total human being. A beautiful sunset. It's great. And you turn and she's on the sunset. Right? The amount of people who wrote cringe on that. I was like, how dare you judge her body that way? I think she's beautiful.

 

[00:11:18.730] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah. I mean, but plus, how is that? I'm so confused.

 

[00:11:21.460] - DAVE ASPREY

I don't know how it's allowed. How do you do something beautiful here.

 

[00:11:24.090] - KAYLA BARNES

But how is it allowed that you are? I'm just very confused. So you can say cringe, but we also have to be accepting of everyone.

 

[00:11:31.610] - DAVE ASPREY

Well, you can say guys are cringing if they have any attractiveness towards their own girlfriend, apparently. And then they all said she was 22, which was so good. She's like, do you know how happy that makes me? Cause guys, no, she's closer to my age. So it's just. It's so funny because people live in this false world. And when it comes to longevity, it's also really a little bit scary, because I'm seeing some western doctors just see dollar signs, and they're like, if I say I'm a longevity doctor, then I can make a quarter million dollars per patient. And I'm talking about, like, Peter T is a great example. He writes a book on longevity, except in the first chapter, it says humans will not extend their lifespan. The best you can do is exercise over exercise all the time until you die when you were going to die. But at least you'll have muscles and be healthier when you die. And I'm like, that's not longevity. That's 1970s longevity. And it's a very western approach. It's like, take statins, get vaccinated, work out to the point of excess. This isn't a longevity plan. And he says longevity is impossible.

 

[00:12:37.560] - DAVE ASPREY

So in the world of longevity, I look to the healers and the doctors and the researchers and the PhDs who are just willing to have the courage and say, we are extending human lifespan. And then you say, what's the evidence? Well, there's this aging clock out of Harvard, right? My rate of aging is 72%, the rate of normal. Anyone listening can get quantified data that is very well validated. And I've interviewed Steve Horvath, who came up with the original aging clock like, this is real science, and we're living in this world, and there are people out there who go, you can't do that. But pay me a quarter million dollars, and I'll tell you how to work out. And then you have these other people who are going, you can't do that. So I'm just gonna sit here and eat pizza and donuts, right. And you get to pick what tribe you're in. But I feel like the it's impossible tribe, those are the ones who get proven wrong the most.

 

[00:13:26.230] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah, I mean, I don't disagree. Well, good on that topic. And by the way, yes? I saw that little beef that you guys had going on there.

 

[00:13:34.980] - DAVE ASPREY

No, actually, it was grass fed beef. I just want to be really clear on that.

 

[00:13:38.430] - KAYLA BARNES

I mean, it's the only kind, right? Grass fed and grass finished.

 

[00:13:41.770] - DAVE ASPREY

No, I think for me, grass fed is the only kind for Peter. He's a little bit too western. He'll just eat whatever, probably kale. He's a kale eater, right?

 

[00:13:48.890] - KAYLA BARNES

Oh, my gosh. You and Kale. It's so funny. I mean, I don't eat kale. I was like, I remember you saying that so long ago.

 

[00:13:54.930] - DAVE ASPREY

We can be friends. Spinach and raspberries have more oxalates than kale, but kale is fetishized. And I know when I was a vegan and a raw vegan, I was victimized by kale. And so I'm really working on doing my healing work around kale.

 

[00:14:08.770] - KAYLA BARNES

Go ahead. Well, I'm here for you if you need any support.

 

[00:14:11.380] - DAVE ASPREY

KSD, post kale stress disorder. It's like a thing. I'm trying to make you laugh, and you're, like, the hardest to make laugh, but you've done it like, five times.

 

[00:14:20.140] - KAYLA BARNES

I've been laughing the whole time, way more than I normally would.

 

[00:14:23.080] - DAVE ASPREY

I know, but I'm just turning it up.

 

[00:14:24.730] - KAYLA BARNES

Pay complimentary.

 

[00:14:27.510] - DAVE ASPREY

I'm just being a dork.

 

[00:14:28.900] - KAYLA BARNES

Okay, so then how. Because people ask me this question, too, right? Like, how long do you think that you're gonna live? Obviously, I'm obsessed with longevity. Super healthy lives. I actually don't know anyone who, you know, you. But, like, in general, most people don't live as healthy. Like, they're not worried about the quality of the rug, as we spoke about before. Before the podcast. Right. So what do you think is gonna help us get to. I know you want to live to 180. So what. What mechanisms and tools are going to help get us there outside of just healthy lifestyle?

 

[00:14:56.940] - DAVE ASPREY

Well, right now, healthy lifestyle is a really good thing to do because every morning you do something, you're going to brush your teeth and do you brush it with toothpaste that harms your thyroid and introduces endocrine disrupting toxins? Or with toothpaste that has other benefits and doesn't have the downside, like I'm going to pick a toothpaste. So it didn't really cost you any extra effort. You just had to know what to do. There's a very simple thing. Your coffee, moldy or no mold, full of trace minerals that increase bone density. Oh, danger coffee. What do you know? That's my new coffee brand, guys. Dangercoffee.com dot. Who knows what you might do. Was that a shameless plug? I think it was.

 

[00:15:36.700] - KAYLA BARNES

I mean, I didn't feel any shame.

 

[00:15:38.260] - DAVE ASPREY

Did you sense any?

 

[00:15:39.030] - KAYLA BARNES

No, I didn't.

 

[00:15:39.900] - DAVE ASPREY

Yeah, I make stuff that I want to drink. There you go.

 

[00:15:41.660] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah, no, I love that. Yeah.

 

[00:15:43.290] - DAVE ASPREY

So anyway, I got distracted. So everything you do in your life is either it's moving the needle in one direction or another and none of it's good or bad. You could say, well, thats bad toothpaste. You use fluoride, which is shown to suppress thyroid function. Its better than Im brushing your teeth probably, right?

 

[00:15:59.710] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah.

 

[00:16:00.330] - DAVE ASPREY

So nothing is good or bad, its just a slider switch. Which direction did it move? Your energy? Which direction did it move? Your longevity? My most recent DNA methylation aging report shows that my extrinsic age, this is the amounts of age that your lifestyle is contributing. 19 and a half years younger than my current age. So this is the power of lifestyle. And that's why I'm aging at 72% the rate of normal people. That's the same rate that Brian Johnson does, which is kind of funny. I've spent $2 million on longevity over 20 years. So my budget's like 100 grand a year on average. And the lowest speed of aging of anyone I've ever met is 63%. And this is a person who probably spends under $1,000 a month and doesn't even take that many supplements. It's mostly just like, you know, eating clean and being relaxed.

 

[00:16:59.310] - KAYLA BARNES

Is it a woman or is it a man?

 

[00:17:01.060] - DAVE ASPREY

It's a woman.

 

[00:17:01.710] - KAYLA BARNES

It's the woman.

 

[00:17:02.370] - DAVE ASPREY

And she's not public with it. She's just a close friend.

 

[00:17:05.170] - KAYLA BARNES

Okay, got it. Yeah, I know that there's the pace of AJ or the longevity Olympics, and there's also a couple women on there just like eating healthy.

 

[00:17:13.410] - DAVE ASPREY

She would be number one if she was interested in competing.

 

[00:17:15.970] - KAYLA BARNES

Oh, wow.

 

[00:17:16.800] - DAVE ASPREY

And it's. No one's beaten 63%. That's the do not in pace that it's based on. I haven't signed up for the long jovian Olympics, but Brian Johnson is going to be at the biohacking conference presenting, and he's been on my show, and he's a cool guy. I actually really enjoy him. And of course, I tease him about not being able to swallow as many pills as me. We talked about that being a weird flex. So I appreciate his work in the world, including his brain science work that most people don't know about.

 

[00:17:43.070] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah, with the kernel. Yeah, yeah, I love that. So, lifestyle, without a doubt. And even, like, I'm friends with Hannah from true diagnostics, and, you know, by far, lifestyle moves the needle the most. There's all these, like, you know, plasmapheresis and different types of stem cells which move the needle as well. But for all of those long term. But what do you think? Do you think it's gonna take, like, Gene therapy? Like, how are we gonna get to 180? Is AI gonna help us get.

 

[00:18:08.420] - DAVE ASPREY

Oh, AI is already helping us right now. We double our knowledge of biology every 72 days. There is no longevity doctor on the planet who can read all the papers that come out.

 

[00:18:19.810] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah.

 

[00:18:20.320] - DAVE ASPREY

So all you can do is work with AI. And the problem we have now is that a lot of the things that AI is trained with are garbage. They're studies that can't be reproduced.

 

[00:18:30.190] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah.

 

[00:18:30.680] - DAVE ASPREY

And, you know, like, make a clear argument for the benefits of stearic acid or saturated fat or something. There are clear arguments, and it'll give you a clearish argument, and then it'll say, but make sure you check with your doctor first. And you should also have some canola oil. And you're like, where did that come from? I didn't even ask you to do that. So what's happening now is people are building models based on their own data sets, and that's what I've been working on with AI. So I have data from people who've been through upgrade labs for ten years, brainwaves from 40 years is end for eleven years. My own data, all of the stuff I've done. So my own Dave bot, which I'm going to be talking about at the conference, is very, very well trained. Actually had a team of people train it, and it's not trained on generic information that's highly questionable and paid for by big pharma. It's trained on data sets that work. So each functional provider is in a position to, with a little bit of spend, build a system that helps to make good recommendations. And I'm even working on how can I take what I've done and use that to help empower physicians.

 

[00:19:38.970] - DAVE ASPREY

That's like a phase two thing. I want to make it easier and then I want to make it so everyone has access to that. So AI is necessary for us to do it. And we're already using AI and we don't even know it. And some of the things that you're reading or some of the recommendations that we get now. So AI, yes, gene therapy, almost certainly. So this is going to trigger some people. About two years before the pandemic, I had a friend named Lou Reese on my show. Lou was working on are you ready? MRNA vaccines for longevity.

 

[00:20:14.700] - KAYLA BARNES

Wow.

 

[00:20:15.440] - DAVE ASPREY

Now there are some genes I would really like to have inserted into my body to make me live a long time. MRNA is just a way to insert a gene. It's the gene you insert that's the problem. And I would like anything that I was going to have injected that way to be extensively tested, et cetera, et cetera. Maybe clinical trials and all that stuff. So I'm just saying, you can't say that metal is bad because you make guns out of metal. You also make cars out of metal. So it's, it's just like a shovel. You can hit someone with a shovel, you dig a hole with a shovel. It's a thing. So that might be a part of it. In the meantime, I have had gene therapy. Ive had the mini circle follistatin gene therapy. Theres a single injection thats in an average responder to this therapy. It takes nine years off your biological age with one injection. Its expensive. In fact, Im flying in a few weeks now down to Cabo, and Im in the clinical trial for the next one thats being tested, which is something I wrote about in my longevity book in supreme clotho.

 

[00:21:18.300] - DAVE ASPREY

Exactly. So. And clotho, not only does it help to protect kidneys, which is a major thing that takes you out, and I watched that I only have one kidney, so I'm extra careful there. But clotho is also longevity throughout the body. I had a team with clotho, skincare stuff recently on the show. And now though, until now anyway, you can't take it orally and you can't inject it because it doesn't absorb that way. But if you turn on a gene in your own cells to make it systemically, the difference is profound. So there's another eight compounds. I've worked with mini circle as an advisor on. These are major longevity compounds. So what's going to happen is over time, you can just tell your body to make more of the stuff. So if, say, some regulatory agency in your country says you're not allowed to have access to peptides, you can be like, screw that, I'm going home. Or actually, screw that, I'm going to Cabo or Thailand or Roatan or any of the places. Or Abu dhabi, actually, which is probably the most exciting. Where? Okay, I went on vacation there and I accidentally slipped at a clinic and I got an injection.

 

[00:22:26.820] - DAVE ASPREY

Now my body makes the peptide on board for the next two years now, but maybe it'll be for ten years. Peptides aren't legal, but your body makes them. I don't know how that works, but let's just say medical tourism is on the rise.

 

[00:22:40.020] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah, you know, I was gonna do the fall statin, but because I'm gonna be getting pregnant soon, your body actually increases fall statin about two times or, you know, increases twice when you're pregnant. So I would have to have it turned off anyway. But I'm excited.

 

[00:22:56.370] - DAVE ASPREY

I wouldn't do the gene therapy stuff right before getting pregnant. It's very likely safe, but has it been tested enough? And I'm one of those guys. I wrote an early book on preconception and fertility, and it took five years to write this. And it's what restored the mother of my children's fertility. She was infertile, and we had them at 39 and 42. And if I could just tell you one thing, less toxins before and during pregnancy is a really important thing. Followed very closely by adequate animal protein and adequate animal fats and adequate minerals. If you just get those right, your chances of having a baby with a healthy brain and healthy body and having a smooth pregnancy, they go up so much, so much higher. And why do you need to inject anything other than maybe glutathione in a pregnant woman? I'm like, like, let's just not take risks. Mother Nature knows what she's doing there. And if it's, you know, a life or death situation where, you know, the mother has a great chance of dying, fine, she needs antibiotics or something. But otherwise, like, chill. Like, let's, let's let Mother Nature take her course.

 

[00:24:01.760] - DAVE ASPREY

I think there's wisdom there.

 

[00:24:03.130] - KAYLA BARNES

No, I'm excited. And, you know, I released all my, I had like a full, like, ultrasound, deep fertility check, essentially. And I mean, my levels are unbelievable. But I have been doing, you know, I've been like, reducing toxic exposure for over ten years. I haven't eaten a piece of inorganic food in, like, over a decade. So, I mean, that's such an important part. Like, I have the lowest toxic burden that I've ever seen, and so have the labs. I mean, but it takes so much work to get there. But no, I'm excited, but I'm really scared about the state of fertility right now.

 

[00:24:35.910] - DAVE ASPREY

You know, when I wrote that book, that book came out in 2011, it was before the bulletproof diet, and it's called the better baby book, and it's helped thousands of people get pregnant. But after I wrote that, I stopped worrying about the population problem. We don't have a population problem. We didn't have one back then either. But the data was already so clear. I wanted to call my book how to not have a kid with autism, because my grandmother and all of my aunts and uncles on one side of the family are on the spectrum with Asperger's syndrome. And so was I until I did a lot of remedial work. So, like, it runs in the family. My kids aren't on the spectrum. And so this was done out of love and also a desire to have fertility, because you need to have that to have kids.

 

[00:25:22.810] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah.

 

[00:25:23.440] - DAVE ASPREY

And the incidence of autism is much higher now, but even worse. When I was 30, the conversations were, God, I hope we don't get pregnant accidentally. This was a serious concern. And every one of my friends who's in their early thirties is like, I hope I can get pregnant. This just happened over the course of ten or 20 years. There's something very bad in our environment. We think we know what it is. It's a combination of things. But I'm really worried about that because the birth rate is so low, if we don't turn on longevity in everyone, we'll just have empty cities in 20 years. It's that bad. And I still hear people say, but we have to control the population. I'm like, are you still stuck in the sixties? Because that's not what the math says.

 

[00:26:09.370] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah, no, I know. That's the weirdest comment, too. When I see that, I'm like, okay, no. Well, if you had three tips for fertility, obviously it's really a complex issue, but what would you say?

 

[00:26:22.450] - DAVE ASPREY

Number one, reduce toxin exposure, especially from endocrine disruptors and heavy metals and toxic mold. Those are the big things that get in the way of getting pregnant and having a healthy pregnancy. If you get those down. Number two, make sure you get your trace minerals and your macro minerals and you get enough animal protein. And you stop eating bad fats and start eating some animal fats. Have some butter. Like, that's what breast milk is made out of, saturated fat. It's okay. Um, and have some fish oil, but not too much. And I wrote a lot of the research there. You need DHA as a mother, but too much fish oil, if you're small, will cause your baby's brain to grow so big that you have to get a c section. So if you're a small person, you might want to time your fish oil. So it comes towards the very end, and then you eat a lot of it when you're nursing. And the final piece of advice, and this is the most important one, and this is more on the energetic nervous system side of the biohacking world, it's that feeling safe is the most important thing you can do to get pregnant and have a healthy pregnancy.

 

[00:27:33.980] - DAVE ASPREY

And this means doing the difficult work as a woman on learning how to feel safe, and your partner doing the difficult work to create a sense of safety for you. And it's very difficult to feel safe all by yourself. It's easier for men than for women, but it's still difficult. And knowing that you have a healthy relationship and you have secure attachment. And even with secure attachment, though, there's a thing that a guy can do, and you just do it sitting there. And it's a thing you do in your heart that creates an energetic field that allows the woman to melt and feel safe. And that is the state that creates the healthiest babies and the most fertility, and it's like the best hug you've ever had, but it's not one that has to be a physical hug, although that helps, too, and probably leads to babies if it's your partner.

 

[00:28:25.290] - KAYLA BARNES

I love that. I agree. I just, I was on the podcast the other day, and I've done all of the human optimization stuff, but, like, getting married to a man that I can truly feel safe with, and a man that can, like, I mean, obviously, you've known me for a while. I'm a very independent, strong willed woman. I mean, I've made a life for myself, which I can be really proud of, but a man that I felt could lead me and have that masculine energy where I could feel safe and relax, because I knew that was, like, one thing that I was just missing, you know?

 

[00:28:56.870] - DAVE ASPREY

Yeah. You're more relaxed now than I've ever seen you, right?

 

[00:28:59.500] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah.

 

[00:28:59.840] - DAVE ASPREY

And that's what happens. And it doesn't matter how strong or independent of a person you are, if you have the right partner, they will amplify you and they'll help you do things and you do things for your husband as well. Right? It works both ways. The art of having healthy relationships is something that you don't hear much about these days. And there's all these weird expectations. And I feel like having a healthy relationship is a continuous evolution that both people have to do and you have to be committed to it. Now you could be saying, Dave, you got divorced three years ago, right? And I will be the first person to say that you can have a successful relationship that ends. So till death do us part. If it's not in both persons best interests, why would we do that to ourselves? Unless we were stuck in a medieval world of producing more people to cut the grain or something for the king. What I am particularly happy about is I had a conscious uncoupling. Im friends with the mother of my children and my former wife and we get along and were both happy.

 

[00:30:11.810] - DAVE ASPREY

So we had a successful relationship. We decided to not do it anymore for a bunch of good reasons. But to have that sense of peace and to have worked on that relationship and realized that that was what we wanted to do. And Im having the most fun. I have very healthy relationships now and have a girlfriend. And if there's an issue, you talk about it. If you're not there in your relationship and you're saying, I want to have a kid to fix things, dude, it's not going to help. It's really not going to help. So what you want to do is commit to doing the difficult relationship work. And when people do that for a year, fertility can just explode because you both work through your own shit and you work through each other's together, and magically that creates that sense of safety and connection. And when the body relaxes, there's something called a sphincter response. And if either party internally, unconsciously, their body's holding on to stuff, they're all tense. Well then of course that's going to affect your reproductive system. That's just how it is. So I just encourage everyone listening. Whether or not you're planning to have kids.

 

[00:31:18.300] - DAVE ASPREY

The more energy you put into your own personal development and creating a sense of peace in yourself, the more it'll affect your relationship.

 

[00:31:25.820] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I feel like I worked on myself first for many years and so.

 

[00:31:32.450] - DAVE ASPREY

You totally did.

 

[00:31:33.100] - KAYLA BARNES

When I met the right person, it was just, it was so easy, natural. He did the same thing. And we actually, we have a marriage optimization meeting. I love that. Yeah. Once every two weeks, like, on the calendar. And, you know, that's something that not a lot of people do. I feel like, but if we're gonna all have meetings about our businesses, why would you not have a meeting met at your marriage?

 

[00:31:53.050] - DAVE ASPREY

I've encouraged so many friends to just get a relationship coach because then you're paying attention to something you really value. And I'm actually dating a relationship coach who teaches people how to have healthy relationships, which it's really easy to have a healthy relationship with someone who studied it for a decade.

 

[00:32:14.720] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah.

 

[00:32:15.330] - DAVE ASPREY

And when I hear what some of the people she's working with are working on, it's always the same kind of stuff. It's, how do I feel safe with a man or with a woman? How do I know when I'm being triggered and what the cause was? Someone who's coached in this world can totally help you. But I have a question for you.

 

[00:32:35.640] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah.

 

[00:32:36.790] - DAVE ASPREY

Why is it for optimization instead of expansion?

 

[00:32:40.510] - KAYLA BARNES

Hmm. I think I just used the word optimization so often that my husband was like, we're calling it the marriage optimization meeting.

 

[00:32:49.130] - DAVE ASPREY

I feel like there's a toxic edge to optimization.

 

[00:32:51.360] - KAYLA BARNES

No, totally. I was like, the optimization section is the grievances section. No, but, okay. Expansion is good. That is more positive. So we start off with compliments. So we start and end on a really good note. There can be the preferences section and optimization. So we tried to make optimization is better than the word grievances or issues. Right.

 

[00:33:13.640] - DAVE ASPREY

So I just feel like there's a trade off in optimization. I'm like, what if we both got. We wanted, we didn't have to, like, trade this for that, and we just found a way to both have everything like that. That's, like, a bigger thing. That's why I've always cringed at, like, health optimization. I'm like, man, what if we just had way more health so we didn't even have to optimize?

 

[00:33:31.130] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah.

 

[00:33:31.610] - DAVE ASPREY

Like, it's like a different mental picture for me. I love that, but I'm not telling you to change the name of your thing. I love that you're doing these. I was just like, I don't know. You chose that?

 

[00:33:39.960] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah.

 

[00:33:41.470] - DAVE ASPREY

So what else do you do in there? You go through compliments and then grievances, basically issues. Like, I don't like it that you, whatever, left the spoon in the dishwasher. Is that the kind of thing?

 

[00:33:52.110] - KAYLA BARNES

Well, first we actually open in prayer. We're both christians, so we do that, and then we give each other compliments. We talk about from a high level things that are working well, and then we go into the shorter section of optimization, as we call it. But we, you know, just to have clear, open communication, it's. Communication is. Is. It's an art. And the way that, you know, I've led a company, you've led a company, but when you're in a marriage, you have to tweak that, and it's been fun to learn. But then we. Yeah, we give some more compliments, and then we close, and the idea is like, it's a very positive experience, but we're always working to tweak, you know, the relationship, because, like I said, I mean, if we're gonna invest so much time doing other meetings, why would you not meet about your marriage?

 

[00:34:40.440] - DAVE ASPREY

I think it's beautiful that you're sharing this with people. One of the things that causes the most harm in business or in a personal relationship is if someone's angry about something and they never say anything, they hold onto it, and they hold onto it, and then it turns from anger into bitterness, and it goes from bitterness to contempt. And John Gottman's, one of the great of writers about relationships, says that's one of the four horsemen, is contempt. So if you're starting to feel contempt for your partner because they did something to the dishes or whatever, the little grievances, it's because you didn't air it and talk about it.

 

[00:35:17.350] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah, no, I mean, I totally agree.

 

[00:35:20.360] - DAVE ASPREY

So that's a longevity strategy if there ever was one.

 

[00:35:23.990] - KAYLA BARNES

You know, that. Well, that's the thing, is, like, you can do all the things, right, but if you don't have, like we said, safety and relationships, and even we know that having, you know, close social ties across the board are so important to longevity. But I feel like that's an area that we're kind of missing a little bit right now.

 

[00:35:41.740] - DAVE ASPREY

The surgeon general, Sanjeev Gupta, came on my podcast right before he got recalled or renamed to be the surgeon general. So he was a surgeon general for Obama, took some time off, wrote a book, and then became Biden's surgeon general. And when he came on, the book he wrote was about the biggest epidemic he saw as surgeon general, and it was an epidemic of disconnection. The number of friends people have has dropped dramatically. So it's kind of weird. Our testosterone is half where it was before. Our number of close friends is half what it was before. Our fertility rate is half what it was before. Something's going on. And I don't think it's just one thing. It's not social media. That did that. Although maybe emfs are part of it, but they've been around for a long time, too. And something probably RFK junior has the best, succinct way of saying this. And I was fortunate to have dinner with him a couple months ago, and we talked about it, and he said, look, sometime around 1992, the incidence of every bad thing happens. Childhood allergies, asthma, autism, arthritis, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, cancer. Everything started going up and it never stopped.

 

[00:37:05.160] - DAVE ASPREY

And you see these graphs, they're relatively stable. And then just. They all spike and they keep getting worse. And he said, clearly something we started doing around 1992 is the cause. And none of the billions of dollars that goes into the National Institute of Health or National Institute of Aging is paying any attention to it. He's like, vote for me. And when I'm in office, the first thing I'm going to do is say, stop what you're doing and look at that so our kids can be healthy again. And I'm not a political guy. I'm like, kind of. I don't care about sports teams either. And I don't care what party you're in. It's irrelevant to me. You like the 49 ers or, I don't know, some other team? I can't even think of one right now. Uh, but it doesn't matter. Like, it feels good, but it's not going to change anything. Um, but if we can get someone like that who's going to change spending to focus on finding that problem, maybe you could spend less money and energy on biohacking and more on just human connection. In the meantime, if your cells are not working and you've triggered your cell danger response because you're eating toxins and nutrient free industrial vegan food, well, it's no wonder you don't have energy left to connect.

 

[00:38:17.950] - DAVE ASPREY

Have you heard about my f word thing with connection, how that works?

 

[00:38:21.280] - KAYLA BARNES

Is it four fs?

 

[00:38:22.240] - DAVE ASPREY

Yeah, the four fs. There's actually five now.

 

[00:38:24.070] - KAYLA BARNES

Oh, five. Okay.

 

[00:38:25.070] - DAVE ASPREY

Yeah. Can I walk through that? That might be helpful for listeners. So after a lot of work on biohacking and also the neurological and even the spiritual stuff that happens at 40 years of zen and fasting in caves and things like that. So I learned meditation from the masters, and I do this biochemical stuff. But your mitochondria, they're sitting in your cells. Ancient bacteria. They're the first line sensors of reality. And your mitochondria vote with each other to decide what's going on. Is it a stressful environment? What time of day is it, is it hot? Is it cold? Is there vibration? Is there nutrients? Is there toxins, blah, blah, blah. And they decide a stress level. And then they communicate with each other. Then they communicate through your nerves and it goes up into your brain and it takes about 350 milliseconds, about a third of a second, for your brain to even get a signal. When my voice is talking, the voice hits your ears, and a third of a second later, your brain starts processing the sound. That third of a second is when your onboard operating system decides what it's going to let you see in the world around you.

 

[00:39:30.220] - DAVE ASPREY

And so what does it do? Well, these little mitochondria, they're not the power plants of the cells. They are environmental sensors and computers. So they sense the environment and then they decide what to do. But they're really dumb and fast computers because there's not a lot of space in there. And what they do is in order. If it's scary, is the first f word fear, run away from kill or hide. And now if they think the environment scary because of some signal that you didn't even notice, they're going to send you an anxiety signal. And if you're not conscious of this, you're going to think, I'm feeling emotional right now. It's probably my partner, it's the guy who cut me off in traffic. But it's actually physiological anxiety that's driven from a subcellular network. So you have a distributed consciousness that's looking for scary stuff. You can reprogram that. And a lot of my personal development work ultimately is not being triggered because it's your body that's triggered, not as much your mental mind. And then the second f word is food. So eat everything. So all life on earth does, it's not just humans, right?

 

[00:40:29.670] - DAVE ASPREY

So if someone's going to kill you, like, respond, and if you're a deer, you run away. And if you're a jellyfish, you sting someone. And if you're a tree, you wrapped your nuts in a hard shell so that nothing would eat them. Like, there's always a defense or you grow a toxin or a spine or something. So we have fear, and then food. Eat everything just in case there's a famine. Right? And then the third f word is one we were talking about earlier. It's fertility. And if you're younger, maybe it's the recreational f word version of that. But fear, food, fertility, in order, that's what we do. And the fourth f word is friend. So all life does this. But if you're stuck in fear and you're malnourished because no one taught you how to eat, and you're still just doing stuff that doesn't work, or you have toxins that block nutrient absorption, or you don't experience nourishing love. I mean, intimacy or sex, but the spiritual healing kind of it. Not that I swiped and had netflix and chill. Not that that isn't fun. It's just not nourishing. It's like junk food versus nourishment.

 

[00:41:31.110] - DAVE ASPREY

And then what comes after that is friend. All life on earth forms tribes or interacts with itself, whether a forest or a tribe of humans. And we support each other and we support the world around us. And it just happens naturally when we're not in a state of fear. But then the f word that I added to this decision making for the whole body, it's forgiveness. And this is how you put energy away from fear. And part of this comes because forgiveness is at the core of the meditation neuroscience practice. I'm doing it 40 years of Zen with executives, and after eleven years of teaching that, and a lot more years of practicing it, you realize how important it is. But it was a conversation with a psychologist named Scott Barry Kaufman, who came on my show, and he studied Maslow's work, Maslow's hierarchy of needs. This everyone needs shelter and safety and water and food and all that. And some people think the f words are related to those. They're not. But Maslow died way before he was supposed to, unexpectedly, in his early sixties. So Scott went and read all of his unpublished papers, and it turns out Maslow was about to say, hey, the final step in the Maslow hierarchy is for transcendence.

 

[00:42:53.380] - DAVE ASPREY

So we are wired in our bones to take care of ourselves and our families, to make ourselves safe. Which is the antidote to fear or peaceful is actually better than fear. To nourish ourselves and each other, which is food. To have healthy, sacred intimacy that is healing and nourishing and is as important as food and air. To have healthy communities and support our friends and be supported by them, and to evolve ourselves. And this happens automatically inside yourselves. And this is awesome, because now, every time you've ever taken a cheesecake, wrapped a pizza around it, ate the whole thing on the same day that you procrastinated and didn't take something because you were afraid, and then saw someone really sexy who knew was bad for you, and went on that date that you enjoyed, but wish you hadn't gone on well, it wasn't you. It was your mitochondria so what I want you to do is to lessen the energy that goes into those and increase the energy that goes into love, goes into friendship, and then goes into forgiveness. Because if you're working on your relationship optimization meeting. Right. Well, what's ultimately happening there?

 

[00:44:03.000] - DAVE ASPREY

You didn't even know you did something that pissed off your partner. So they tell you in a safe container, and you're like, oh, my God, I'm so sorry. And then they forgive you, which means they stop carrying it. And what forgiveness is, just stop. It means you're not reactive anymore. It doesn't mean you tell someone you forgive them. It just means I turned off my reactivity so I don't waste electricity on it. If I'm not wasting electricity, I can do more fertility, I can do more friend, and I can do more forgiveness. So energy for evolution comes from forgiveness. That's how it all works.

 

[00:44:35.060] - KAYLA BARNES

Oh, I want to talk about. Okay. I want to talk about this new study that's from the American Heart Association. I think with intermittent fasting. I mean, what's going on here?

 

[00:44:45.970] - DAVE ASPREY

Are you asking why anyone still listens to the American Heart association, given the poor job they've done over the last 50 years? That's a really good question, Kayla. Thank you.

 

[00:44:52.710] - KAYLA BARNES

Thank you. Oh, yeah, that actually is. Yeah, it's part one of two parts of my question.

 

[00:44:56.130] - DAVE ASPREY

Yeah. Okay, so, I'm sorry. So this irrelevant organization, that's a trade union for statins, you're asking about some study that they published.

 

[00:45:03.890] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah. Didn't they say, like, intermittent fasting increases cardiovascular disease by, like, 90% without asking.

 

[00:45:11.100] - DAVE ASPREY

What the people were eating or why they were intermittent fasting or anything like that? Yeah, it turns out that if you just don't eat because you're stressed or because you're poor, that increases cardiovascular disease. But practicing intermittent fasting the way that, well, you've written about. I've written about, actually two books about intermittent fasting. The bulletproof diet was the first big intermittent fasting book, and then I wrote a fasting specific book because people doing it wrong. So it's kind of like they say, red End processed meat is bad for you. Which one was it, and how was it cooked? Because if McNuggets are in that, I don't care about your stupid data. In fact, it's not even a useful conversation. And, yes, McNuggets are in there. And when they say people eat meat, it's like 1oz of processed meat on 5000 grams of carbohydrate fake bread. Like, it's it's horrifying. And so the data is gross and stupid, and you cannot make decisions from bad data like that. It's just epidemiology doesn't work. What you can do is you can say, what happens when people do intermittent fasting. Let's look at their pace of aging. Let's look at their biomarkers.

 

[00:46:16.790] - DAVE ASPREY

What do you know? It turns out, when you do it well, it works. What's happening with the American Heart association and many, many other old school, failing institutions of medicine is that they have a built in belief that there is a single cause for something, and it's completely crazy. Imagine if I said, what's the single cause of bread?

 

[00:46:42.680] - KAYLA BARNES

Of bread?

 

[00:46:43.520] - DAVE ASPREY

Yeah. You say, well, you would need water, flour, salt, yeast, and an oven combined in the right order for the right amount of time at the right temperature, and you get bread. But if you were the American Heart association, they would say, we spent $18 billion proving there is no bread, because we tested salt, we tested water, we tested flour. We even tested an oven with nothing in it. Clearly, there is no bread. So how dare you say that intermittent fasting is the cause of this 90% increase in cardiovascular disease when you didn't control for anything else meaningful in this. And these epidemiology studies are excuses for selling peasant food to people, food that's bad for them. And bottom line is, if you're listening to the show, you're not average. There's one average person on the planet. Everyone else is to one side or the other of average. And what works for you probably won't work for me, because you might have noticed my boobs are not as big as yours. I have a little bit of aromatization going on, so there might be a little bit there. But, you know, let's not judge, right?

 

[00:47:50.520] - DAVE ASPREY

So, like, we're different biologically, and that's okay. So, for these clowns to say intermittent fasting, does this. Give me the recipe. Give me the recipe for what? Does it. What else has to happen? And then show me that it happens. Put 25 people on an intermittent fasting diet for two years and track their cardiovascular things, track their obesity, track their diabetes, track their blood sugar. Show me that your dumb theory is provable in the real world. Until then, could you just keep sucking money and making heart disease worse? Cause I'm tired of that.

 

[00:48:24.180] - KAYLA BARNES

I know. It is so sad because, in general, people see this headline, and then what is gonna happen? They're immediately gonna be scared to intermittent fast. But if you even, like, use a little bit of common sense, you would see that this can't make any sense. Like, how can not eating all day increase the risk of cardiovascular disease?

 

[00:48:43.260] - DAVE ASPREY

Here's how it would, and here's how it does. This is why I wrote fast this way, which is the second fasting book that has, like, the psychology and spiritual side of it. Over exercising increases cardiovascular risk. Yeah, right. Anything that's a stress on the body ultimately can increase risk. So the aha data doesn't look at intentional intermittent fasting versus people who just work a lot and can't eat and things like that. And even their definition of a fast, I don't think was a really accurate one. But if you over fast, especially as a woman, um, you will run into the same thing that happens if you over keto and even if you over carnivore. And I've done all those by that. I've been a vegan, and then I've gone really deep on intermittent fasting. Oh, too much cold therapy, same thing. And what you'll find is that for biological stressors, that can be good for you, they can be bad for you. And women usually hit the wall before men do. It usually takes four to six weeks of fasting. Too much or cold therapy, too much and maybe more if you're younger and you're highly resilient.

 

[00:49:49.850] - DAVE ASPREY

But if instead of becoming a tool to stimulate growth, they become a tool to kind of overstimulate yourself. Every day, without enough recovery, in four to six weeks, women will start saying, huh, my sleep isn't as good as it used to be. So you wake up, and if you're tracking it, it's not as good. You grog and you feel a little bit hungover, but you know that your cold therapy or your intermittent fasting or your heavy lifting every day, it's good for you or going for a long run, which is even worse. So you're doing those because. Well, I know it's good for me, or in my case, being a vegan. Like, I have to be even more vegan because I'm not feeling good. And I'm convinced that being vegan is good for me. No, it wasn't. So if you do this and you keep doing it another six weeks or so later, you start noticing that your cycle is irregular. So you better probably fast even longer on the weekend, right? Because things aren't working right?

 

[00:50:40.540] - KAYLA BARNES

Oh, no.

 

[00:50:41.130] - DAVE ASPREY

Well, no, this is what happens. It's the fasting trap. It's the keto trap, it's the vegan trap. It's finding something works amazingly, so you double down on it and then it doesn't work. It's got to get the right dose.

 

[00:50:49.690] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah.

 

[00:50:50.310] - DAVE ASPREY

And then the final step is you start getting thin hair because you're getting thyroid dysfunction or too much cortisol that they can both cause that. So with men, it takes us another two to four weeks to hit the wall, usually because our adrenals work differently and we're not having a monthly cycle. And same thing, we start getting poor quality sleep. We wake up without a kickstand and then our hair starts at then. Right, so it's the same thing. So is fasting good for you or bad for you? Neither one. Is water good for you, bad for you? Well, how many people die every year from drinking too much water during marathons? A lot. It's called hyponatremia and how many people drowned? So water's bad for you or maybe the right dose of water is what we should be talking about. Same thing with fasting. So if you are looking to be extra fertile, what I found in fastest way is that for women, and these are specific studies for women, and these were studies of fertile women, most of them. There were a couple that were postmenopausal as well. It's a twelve hour fast. Three times a week is when the benefits start turning in.

 

[00:51:51.930] - DAVE ASPREY

Okay, most of us can do that. And if you did a 14 hours fast three times a week or maybe four times a week, because you're feeling really good and you're looking at your recovery score, your heart rate variability on a sleep tracker, and as soon as it starts to go down, have some protein for breakfast that day. You don't have to fast on a day when you're not strong. But if you're like, you know, it's go, I'm feeling great today, eat 2 hours later. And that's how you use intermittent fasting. It's called fast this way because every day it's different. Yeah, I'm not going to fast. If I flew from one side of the country to the other in 48 hours, I might fast during the flight because that's a good idea. But when I land, give me the stake. And I don't care if I broke a fasting window because I already had enough stress from flying. And just kindness and recovery is what drives adaptation.

 

[00:52:36.240] - KAYLA BARNES

No, I agree with all of that, but I also am thinking like, well, what was fasting defined as? I'm not super, I know the outcome or what the headline said, but what was fasting in this study?

 

[00:52:47.570] - DAVE ASPREY

I remember reading it, and it was laughable. Whatever the definition was, it's been too far. I wrote a bunking thing on Instagram. I was like, this is dumb.

 

[00:52:55.560] - KAYLA BARNES

Because most people like, if we look at the actual statistics, right? Isn't it, like, 70% of people are either overweight or obese. I mean, in the US, over here.

 

[00:53:04.890] - DAVE ASPREY

And so then, like, 88% are metabolically unfit. Oh, and 12% of Americans eat almost all of the steak. I'm proudly one of them.

 

[00:53:13.000] - KAYLA BARNES

Me too. I ate a lot of steak.

 

[00:53:14.310] - DAVE ASPREY

All the healthy ones.

 

[00:53:15.220] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah, I ate a lot of steak. But, I mean, the whole point is, it's just a crazy idea if that's what we're working with, with the statistics, because the people that I think push themselves way too hard. What we know is a much smaller.

 

[00:53:29.300] - DAVE ASPREY

Percentage of people, they're not the ones they're measuring. In epidemiology studies, there are a lot of people who are fat right now, and I'm not saying the word obese because I was 300 pounds and I was fat, and that's just a fact, right. And I didn't like it. It was uncomfortable, and I was ashamed of it. I felt guilty. I would always starve myself. I went to the gym 90 minutes a day, six days a week for 18 months to try and lose the weight, and it didn't lose a single pound. I studied a 46 inch waist after that. So, like, I feel you. But if you're metabolically unfit like that, you have to do something. And if they're applying epidemiology to you and saying, well, here's what this group of people who. They're doing stuff that doesn't work, but they're working hard on it. They're trying. Fat people are willpower athletes. They're applying willpower all the time to try and not be unhealthy, unless they give up and decide, oh, this is normal and healthy. No, it's not. So how do we help them? Well, we don't look at epidemiology studies. We look at, well, what's this one person who's working really hard to lose weight?

 

[00:54:35.170] - DAVE ASPREY

What's worked, what hasn't worked, what are their lab values? What are their lifestyle practices? And we provide step by step advice that actually works, and then we measure them the next week, the next day, the next month. And I'm not talking lab work measuring. I'm talking about even things like a bioimpedance scale or there's lots of ways to get data. And we say, did those recommendations work? If they didn't. This is going to sound really weird. You should stop. So when some big company told you to drink a diet soda and cancel it out with a Snickers bar, which is what a lot of the calories in, calors out, people would tell you is perfectly acceptable, well, try it. Did it work? And if it didn't work, well, then try something else. And that's how I lost my hundred pounds. And I just got really data driven because I realized I believed all sorts of crap that wasn't true, about exercise, about calories, about fat, about almost everything. I'd been programmed with stuff that made me sick and made me spend a lot of money on consumer packaged goods that didn't work. So this is my call to you.

 

[00:55:32.890] - DAVE ASPREY

It's your fault, which means you can control it. Thankfully, it means you don't know what to do yet, and there's nothing wrong with that. If you say there's nothing I can do, it's genetic, you've given up. There is something you can do about it, you just don't know what it is. And thankfully, we're here to help, and there's lots of people. So try it for a month or two, and if it doesn't work, try something else. But giving up isn't a good idea because we both know too many people who recovered from terrible health things. Chronic fatigue syndrome, in my case, arthritis, obesity, just all this horrible stuff I wouldn't wish on anyone. Well, I just feel like never continuing to do what epidemiology tells you to do. And the American Heart association, they just look at a bunch of data and say, what would help us promote our agenda more? And then they publish that. So I just look at that as kind of like reading the comics.

 

[00:56:27.570] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah, but I mean, it's. I mean, it should be criminal, but it's not, unfortunately.

 

[00:56:32.360] - DAVE ASPREY

You know, I had something happen in the early days of bulletproof. It was actually brought tears to my eyes. I was in Malibu at a tv studio executive's house, and I'd been invited to speak to a room of about 100, like, really big names in Hollywood, like, all the producers and super famous people. And I gave the talk about saturated fat and thyroid and animal protein and carbs and all that. And one of the women I knew was a cardiothoracic surgeon in the room. Cardiothoracic surgeons either love me or hate me, but it's only 20% who love me. The rest of them are like, who's that guy think he is?

 

[00:57:06.640] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah.

 

[00:57:08.120] - DAVE ASPREY

So at the end of the show, she stands up or end of the show, the end of the talk. She stands up and says, I'm a past president of the American Heart association, and I'm like. And I kind of. My heart fell. I'm like. I just said, look, I really want to know what you think, because I know everything I said has a reference behind it. Like, this is real science. But I decided I really want to know how to think. And she turns and she makes eye contact with people in the room, and she goes, everything you said is right, including the stuff about reverse t three. Two years ago, we declared cholesterol is a nutrient of non concern. What that means is they were wrong. And she said, we were wrong about eating cholesterol, but now no one will listen. And the reason it literally brought tears to my eyes is the day before, I had been on a phone call with Nina Techolz, who is a very big scientific writer about fat, and we'd had this discussion like, is it time for a class action lawsuit over these kinds of recommendations that are harming people?

 

[00:58:11.030] - DAVE ASPREY

And the very next day, someone who was really steeped in the traditional western cardiac stuff, they evolved, okay? They didn't evolve in the direction I want. I just ripped apart their fasting stuff. But I actually have hope that there are good people all over the place, even if they're in organizations that are doing bad things and they're just waking up and they're being curious, and the speed of change isn't fast enough. But don't worry, AI has got that for us. And there will come a day in the next really small number of years where you just can't say something that's not true because it's too easy for people to go out and just look at real science and say, you know what? I debunk that in 20 seconds using chat, GPT 19, or whatever it is, because either it works or it doesn't. That's a fact. It's not an opinion, it's not a marketing campaign. It's real.

 

[00:59:03.020] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah, I agree. But one problem that we're having right now is we don't have. So I hired. I released all my labs publicly and just what I've been doing for the past few years. And during that journey, I hired three female PhD candidates to basically, you know, index all of the female research. And a lot of it we just don't have, like, we have these studies that say women need like, nine more minutes of sleep than men.

 

[00:59:28.870] - DAVE ASPREY

It's probably more like an hour, depending on what kind of brain you have.

 

[00:59:31.990] - KAYLA BARNES

Agreed. Agreed. Like, so what I am going to be doing later this year, which I'm really excited about, is helping to fund some, like, female human studies.

 

[00:59:40.820] - DAVE ASPREY

This is awesome. And it's. It's funny. There's a few people out there like, well, biohacking is for men. I'm like, since the beginning of the biohacking movement, 60% of biohackers have been women. Women are better biohackers than men because generally, if you just take, close your eyes and randomly select a guy and a woman, the woman is going to have more bodily awareness than the guy. And there's really obvious biological reasons for that. And the typical guy, including me before I was about 30, realized I was a complete shit show. I had to work on it. Anything below the neck that didn't have a bone sticking out was probably just fine. And you could walk it off. Like, this is what guys do. So our bodily awareness is not typically as high. It's like, oh, I have a body that changes sometimes. Who would have thought, right?

 

[01:00:20.880] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah.

 

[01:00:21.570] - DAVE ASPREY

So there's huge numbers of signals that come in from the body in men and women. And in biohacking, we're saying, well, what are the signals? How do we read them? And then how do we change the signal from the environment so that we get better signals from our body? Along the way, though, most medical research up until about 2000 was just done on dudes, young dudes, and mostly white dudes. And the reason for that is that who was in college, and college students are free research. That's why you hired PhD candidates, right? Because they were cheap.

 

[01:00:51.950] - KAYLA BARNES

Yes. Affordable.

 

[01:00:54.350] - DAVE ASPREY

Affordable, no rip on that. I mean, that's how it works with PhD candidates.

 

[01:01:00.170] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah.

 

[01:01:00.710] - DAVE ASPREY

So what's going on is now we're doing studies in medicine that are looking at different races, different ages, and women are getting more attention in the fertile years. But women in perimenopause and in menopause are still largely ignored, which doesn't even make sense because women who are in menopause are easy to study because they're relatively stable. And perimenopause is hard to study because you can be all over the place. And then fertility is hard to study if you're in your fertile years because where are you in your cycle compared to all the other people in the study? So the people doing studies were lazy, but I think we're fixing it now, don't you? Like, isn't it better in 2024 than it was in 2010 than it was in 2000?

 

[01:01:42.000] - KAYLA BARNES

Well, I mean, we're definitely moving in the right direction. But now with things like oura ring in natural cycles, and I, you know, I'm fortunate enough to have relationships with these companies. We can figure out where women are because the women have the data. Like, I feel like women really, I mean, some women were understanding their cycle, but I push that all the time. Like, figure out where you are at because you have so much more control then, right. And you can time your fasting and you can time your cold therapy and even your exercise. You can time all these things when you understand. So I'm so excited about that because, you know, at the end of the day, making a lasting impact with, without a doubt, you'll be doing is so important to me, too. And I want to be able to give back. And if I've been in a position to do so, I'm excited, too.

 

[01:02:25.150] - DAVE ASPREY

I love what you're doing. And for guys out there, I have an app on my phone that tracks my girlfriend's cycle. Why would I do that? Well, because I love her and because it allows me to know what state her biology is in, which can affect the kinds of activities I'll suggest, and it affects how I take care of her. Right. And it also means that, you know, I'm pretty sure that this is a time when she might be more volatile, even though she's not a volatile person, and give her a pass on that day, because I understand I've also been volatile from my own hormones. You give me too much cortisol or whatever, I can be a jerk. So understanding that as a woman is vital and understanding that as a partner of a woman is also important. So I just think that's part of a healthy relationship at this point. And if you don't talk about it, you don't know. Plus, if you don't want kids or you do want kids, and you track your cycle, there's five days where if a woman's in her fertile year, she's going to be profoundly attractive to you and fertile.

 

[01:03:24.610] - DAVE ASPREY

And you might want to know what those days are. So you either do or don't have a baby on those days. Those are like the fun days. And also as a woman, this is a little tip from a few women I've coached. If you're raising funding or asking for a raise, do it during the five days when you're fertile and watch what happens. If you have a big talk and you can schedule it when you're fertile, the audience will be wrapped and none of us are conscious of that. This is not a thing that men or women choose to do. It's wired in our bones. And we're like, why is that person saying such interesting things? We don't know. It's because of pheromones or quantum signaling, whatever the heck. But it's provable. So there's a hint. You have the most power to influence others when you're fertile.

 

[01:04:06.620] - KAYLA BARNES

Well, thank you for that. Women will love that.

 

[01:04:09.150] - DAVE ASPREY

Well, they'll say, I'm a. Whatever. Cringe. Hey, guys, please don't say cringe, because you shouldn't say that about the women I love.

 

[01:04:16.270] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah. I mean, no one says cringe on my page, thankfully.

 

[01:04:19.670] - DAVE ASPREY

Oh, they do it to guys all the time. It's a way that women try to cancel men. I love it.

 

[01:04:23.950] - KAYLA BARNES

It's a new or something.

 

[01:04:24.870] - DAVE ASPREY

It's a new thing. Yeah. And anytime you say a compliment about women or you talk about reproductive stuff, they're like, cringe. Here's a guy talking about it. So you guys can say, I don't really care, but it's pretty much you're talking about your mom.

 

[01:04:35.910] - KAYLA BARNES

All right, well, I'll just go ahead and say. Just don't say that. I mean, why say that? That's ridiculous.

 

[01:04:40.490] - DAVE ASPREY

You say it because you're traumatized.

 

[01:04:42.070] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah. If you want to be doing well in all areas, you're probably not thinking about cringe.

 

[01:04:47.100] - DAVE ASPREY

So attacking others is great fun. Doesn't it make you feel empowered to attack?

 

[01:04:51.540] - KAYLA BARNES

No.

 

[01:04:52.080] - DAVE ASPREY

Oh, you've done your healing work. I forgot. Yeah. So there you go, guys. So don't pick on Kayla or me. Or if you do, it's because you need healing.

 

[01:04:59.360] - KAYLA BARNES

Yes. And by the way, my husband also, we share our oura ring data, so we know how each other's sleep was the night before. And then the natural cycles app, he's, like, getting pings all the time, like, about different times up.

 

[01:05:11.540] - DAVE ASPREY

My aura let you share data like that. Oh, cool. Yeah, I'm going to turn that on, too. And natural cycles, huh? I don't remember what app we're using, but.

 

[01:05:19.200] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah, there's a few. There's, like, natural cycles flow clue, a couple ones. But either way.

 

[01:05:23.300] - DAVE ASPREY

What's your favorite cycles?

 

[01:05:24.690] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah, because they have a direct, integral integration with the aura app. So you literally, you just. You don't have to do your temperature every morning. It just checks everything for you. So it's, like, so easy.

 

[01:05:33.550] - DAVE ASPREY

That's awesome. I really appreciate that you're doing this work because I wrote the fertility book and had to do so much deep diving into measuring temperature in the morning to figure out fertility windows and to turn fertility back on so that I could even have kids. I'm like, this is such precious knowledge, and this is what grandmothers used to pass down. You go off and do the woman conversations, and somehow that got lost, and it feels like the operating manual for your body. It's different for men and women. There's a lot of commonality, and someone's got to rewrite it for both of us and for just our entire species. And that's kind of what biohacking is doing.

 

[01:06:15.300] - KAYLA BARNES

I mean, yeah, I couldn't agree more. And it's such a. It's just overall, it's such an exciting time. You know, I think information is power, obviously, and, you know, oftentimes women are put on birth control, which is a class one carcinogen. And it's amazing because if you just start using a ring or a thermometer with an app, you don't have to do that.

 

[01:06:37.040] - DAVE ASPREY

So did you say birth control is bad for you?

 

[01:06:40.360] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah, that's what I said.

 

[01:06:41.910] - DAVE ASPREY

Thank you for saying that. Cause when I say that, they're like, look at this cis white man telling women what to do with their bodies. And I'm like, guys, please don't misgender me until you ask. Thank you very much. That's very offensive. And then after that, I'm like, look, I love the women in my life. I do not want them to disrupt their brains, their hormones, to increase the risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease by using an industrial chemical for birth control when there are safe and available birth control techniques, including knowing your fertility window, that don't harm you. Like, I don't want anyone to be harmed. So I've been talking about this since I wrote the book, and I think a shout out for T's Wiley. Have you ever interviewed her? She wrote a book called Sex, Lies and Menopause that came out a while ago, and she's this very unusual researcher, doesn't have the advanced degree, but her Wiley protocol is a way of using hormone therapy that mimics the monthly cycle, even post menopause, and she has really good results with it. But the reason she was able to do this is that she had a.

 

[01:07:55.210] - DAVE ASPREY

An unusual growth on one of the parts in her brain in college, and she can just read papers and absorb the information. But she's one of the women who raised the alarm the loudest first about the dangers of hormonal, artificial hormonal birth control. So I just would call any man out there, if the woman in your life is using the pill, she's hurting herself. Right. And maybe there's a medical reason. There are times, very few times, when the benefits outweigh the risks. And I would just, you know, it's her choice. But you can be supportive. Right. And just create a safe environment to go off of it. My experience from talking with thousands of women over the years is that when they go off the pill, they discover who they are, because it changes your whole view of the world, and it changes who you're attracted to and how you notice things. So I feel like we're taking away a really sacred part of being human when we use hormones inappropriately.

 

[01:08:56.820] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah, I agree. I think there's even some data on, like, women on birth control are attracted to, you know, basically less masculine men, which is interesting.

 

[01:09:07.030] - DAVE ASPREY

I haven't seen the less masculine. We do know that when your hormones are working properly, if a guy smells good to you, he's histocompatible with you. And if the guy just doesn't smell right and you're not attracted at that level, that means that you're not gonna have healthy babies together. So there's a lot of people, they get married on the pill, and then, oh, it's time to have babies, go off the pill, and then there's no attraction anymore. So that's one of the big problems. But there's something else about the pill, and this is something, we don't have a study about this, but I've interviewed two environmental biologists about this, and let me walk you through it. Earlier, I mentioned when a woman is in the middle of her ovulation cycle, it affects the people around her. So one of the reasons, and there are many, but one of the reasons I think we have a decline in testosterone, especially in young men, is that 85% of women are on industrial hormonal birth control at some point in their life. So now, if you're a guy walking around in a world where there's no fertile women, what is your biology going to do?

 

[01:10:16.790] - DAVE ASPREY

Yeah, you're going to have less testosterone because there's no need for it. And the evidence I have to support that comes from trees going back about 50 years now. We started planting only male trees in cities because male trees don't make a lot of debris that you have to clean up. Right.

 

[01:10:36.460] - KAYLA BARNES

Okay.

 

[01:10:37.010] - DAVE ASPREY

So in those cities, when there are no girl trees around for the boy trees, the boy trees make ten times more pollen because there's a sensing mechanism to know, oh, my gosh, the other trees must be very far away. So let me make extra pollen in the hopes that I can reach one. So we end up having a lot more allergies because of this. And doesn't it make sense that our own human hormones, entirely invisible to our conscious mind, would be affected by those around us? So when we use hormonal disruptors as birth control, it affects men and women, and it's not good for anyone on the planet. And it just. It's time to say, women can have the right to control. Women can have the right to birth control. They just don't need to do it in a harmful way to themselves. Like, nobody wins in this thing except maybe big companies trying to make women work harder.

 

[01:11:32.520] - KAYLA BARNES

Yeah, no, I agree. And I love the tools that we have nowadays, you know, because it's truly easier than ever. Of course, it still takes some diligence and, like, paying attention, but it's definitely easier than it's ever been in the past.

 

[01:11:44.450] - DAVE ASPREY

Yeah. And you're. You're doing a lot of really cool work, Kayla. I just genuinely appreciate that. And I. I think for us to have a healthy society, you need to have happy men, and you need to have happy women. And if either men or women have broken biology, for whatever reason, it's a lot harder to be happy. So we fix our biology, and then we have the energy it takes to do the work so that you can have peace and happiness and things like that. And if only women do that and men don't, we still don't have balance, and we don't have mutual support, and if only men do that, it's the same thing. So you're working on the harder part of the problem.

 

[01:12:24.120] - KAYLA BARNES

Well, thank you. And, I mean, yeah, always have been inspired by you and the work that you're doing. So thank you for coming today.

 

[01:12:31.490] - DAVE ASPREY

It's always fun to catch up, and I love your new digs. I'm so happy that you're in a good relationship and you're working on it, and, yeah, you're just at a really cool place. I can see you. You're just more peaceful than I've ever seen you. It's good.

 

[01:12:42.290] - KAYLA BARNES

Well, thank you, and, yeah, I agree. So thank you. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and views expressed on this podcast are not medical advice. This podcast, including Kayla Barnes, does not accept responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of the information contained herein. Opinions of their guests are their own, and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein. If you think you have a medical issue, consult a licensed physician.

 

Kayla Barnes
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